Ellen Glasgow Critical Essay | Critical Review by The New York Times Book Review

Critical Review by The New York Times Book Review

SOURCE: A review of The Shadowy Third, in The New York Times Book Review, October 28, 1923, p. 16.

In the following early review of The Shadowy Third, the critic finds Glasgow's ghost stories uncommonly believable because of their blend of naturalism and supernaturalism.

In these days when perturbed spirits refuse to rest, when they obey that impulse to self-expression even to the point of saying it with flowers, it is pleasant to come upon such well-behaved and considerate spooks as those who people the principal stories of Ellen Glasgow's The Shadowy Third. But be it understood that Miss Glasgow refrains from adventuring deliberately into the pseudoscientific side of psychic phenomena. She merely adopts the device—and in her hands it becomes a highly effective one—of making the dead who continue to live in the memory assume at times a visual form. Miss Glasgow accomplishes the transition so smoothly, and blends...
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